The invention pertains to a contact element, especially suitable for mobile applications such as phones, made of an electrically conductive material, preferably a metal, and comprising a first contact or foot and a second contact or plunger member which are connected to one another by means of a spring.
Such contact elements are known, e.g. from U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,877. This U.S. patent discloses a contactor for an electronic tester for testing an electronic device such as a printed circuit board or the like, which has at least one resilient contact pin that is electrically conducting and engageable with a contact or terminal of said electronic device. Each of said resilient contact pins has a plunger member whose plunger head is guided linearly in a slot, said plunger member being followed in the axial direction by a spring. Said plunger member and said spring of the resilient contact pins according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,877 are jointly formed in one piece from a portion of a metal sheet. In a preferred embodiment the resilient contact pin is equipped with a linear slider guide in which said plunger head is axially slideable and in which said spring is located and said resilient contact pin consists of said slider guide and said bar. The slider guide may also be made of the said metal sheet.
In other words, each of the contact pins according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,877 comprises a separate holding and guiding box. The contact pin must be inserted into this box before the combination of contact pin and box is inserted in a cavity in the housing of a contactor, which procedure thus is rather labour intensive.
Also, use of such a box does not allow maximum miniaturisation.
The invention aims to provide a contact element of the above-mentioned type which allows easy manufacture, does not involve the use of a voluminous holding and guiding box, and allows easy and fast insertion of the contact element directly into the housing of, e.g., a connector or contactor.
To this end, the invention is characterised in that at least one, preferably substantially flat, rigid element is attached either to the first or to the second contact, which element bridges the spring and runs parallel to at least part of the other of the said contacts.
Such a rigid element facilitates insertion of the contact element into a housing and obviates the need for a separate holding and guiding box.
In a preferred embodiment the first and second contacts, the spring, and the rigid element are jointly formed in one piece from a sheet of an electrically conductive material, preferably a metal. It is further preferred that after formation of the said one piece, the connection between the rigid element and the rest of the contact element is subsequently bent over an angle of approximately 180xc2x0.
Thus, the contact element including the rigid element can be formed, e.g., from a metal sheet in one go. After the said forming of the contact element, the main process steps remaining are bending of the rigid element and cutting the obtained contact element loose from its carrier.